Voice suggestions?

I'm going to be doing a course on Voice in fiction writing.
Let's talk a bit about "voice".

1. What does it mean to you?
2. What would you say are the elements of voice in fiction? (that is... like sentences, word choice, attitude, distance, viewpoint, whatever).
3. Have you read manuscripts and book and stories that didn't have much voice? What was the effect? (Examples from big bestsellers who won't be harmed by our using it as example.:)
4. How would you characterize your voice-- three adjectives maybe? (Ex. Spare, stark, precise./ Lush, over-the-top, poetic./ Subversive, ironic, clever.)
5. Do you work on your voice as you draft, or do you go with what comes naturally?
6. Can you "revise in" your voice, or do you stay with what your voice comes out as in your first draft?
7.  Have you written passages or scenes where you thought you didn't have a voice?
8. Now let's say I want to ask people to characterize their voice using some kind of metaphor or analogy, like "if your voice was a food, what would it be?" "Is there a song or musician who sounds like your voice?"
9. Any great thoughts about voice I can steal (with attribution)?

This is really hard to teach-- it's kind of vague, and yet deeply individual.

Alicia

The Oxford Comma, Robert Frost, and Comma Suicide

This will start out boring for non-punctuation-lovers, but then I'll quote Robert Frost, which is always a great benefit to society. So slog through the boring part to get to the poetry and my explanation of how Frost shows how important it is to "know the rules, then break them."

Oxford Comma

Here's a minor comma fix, and it's more "discretionary than obligatory:" The Oxford comma.

For some reason, the final comma in a series (before the "and") is called the Oxford comma, but it's also called the "serial comma". The rule is, when you have a series of three or more items in a row, with "and" before the last one, you put a comma before the "and" so that there's a comma after each item. So: The US flag is red, white, and blue.

This is done differently in journalism, where they used to have to save space and ink and so eliminated as many comma rules as they could. J So you'll see the "and" without a comma before in magazine and newspapers and often on news websites too.

Academic writing, however, follows the rules of book publishing, and the "Oxford comma" is the convention there. Just a minor change, and as I said, this is a rule in academic and book writing, so you'll often see series without that comma in the popular press.

More about the "Oxford comma"

See Commas, Commas, and More Commas.

What About Robert Frost, You Ask?

The great American poet Robert Frost surely knew the rules. No one made better use of the conventions of the language and grammar than he did in creating his deceptively simple and lovely poems. He's a great example of how understanding the convention (and how the reader would conventionally read something) in order to subvert it for a greater or deeper meaning-- punctuation becomes subtext.

Now as I said above, the general rule followed by book editors and publishers is that when there is a series of three or more like items (like three adjectives), you place a comma before the "and" or the last item in the series, indicating that these are all basically similar and yet separate from each other.

So with Frost's poem in manuscript, the book editor (or, as the Frost myth goes, the typesetter of the book, cleaning up after the editor ) saw this line with this series:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep

Well, of course the punctilious editor/typesetter made haste to add that Oxford comma-- the RULE.

And usually, that would have been exactly correct.

However, again according to myth, Frost saw the proofs and quickly "stetted" or insisted that the original be maintained.

Why? Was Frost being stupid? Did he not know the rule?

He knew the rule. He knew what effect abiding by the rule would create for the reader. And he knew he wanted another effect, one that could be achieved by subverting the rule.

Let's look at the two meanings-- comma in or comma out.

Here's the entire stanza. This is the final verse of that achingly beautiful poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".  (You can read the whole poem, and you really should, here at the Poetry Foundation.)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep

So this was what Frost ended up with-- what he started with, what he wanted-- comma out.

Why did he insist on that change, or rather, the change back? The defiance of convention? 

Let's look at the meaning conveyed by each option.  

Comma in:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.

With that comma in, the three adjectives are "equal in weight". That is:

The woods are lovely, the woods are dark, and the woods are deep.

They each modify or describe "the woods".

Now take the comma out, and see what happens:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

With the comma out, the "dark and deep" now modify "lovely":

The woods are lovely, because they are dark and deep.

See the difference?

The first is a placid and unremarkable (though perfect in its scansion :) description of the woods.

The second is a subtextual confession of the longing for "darkness and depth".

Here is a man who has stopped by a snowy woods on a winter evening, a man weary of his responsibilities, his "promises to keep", and momentarily transfixed by the "loveliness" of the woods. And what is lovely about them to him? The darkness and depth. The death. (This is poetry, so it won't be transparent. This is Frost, so we must always search beneath the extraordinary "prettiness" of his prose to find the deep meaning he always embeds.)

He looks at the woods. He finds the darkness and depth "lovely". He thinks of... well. No. He can't do that. He has promises to keep, and miles to go before he sleeps.

We have just witnessed a man choosing life. 

Those final lines (repeated just to make you ponder this):

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep

Those would have little resonance if all that had just happened was the man stopped and saw the pretty woods and commented on how they are "lovely, dark, and deep."

Coming after that line with the missing comma, however?

They mean he's made a choice. He will not succumb to the "lovely dark and depth." He will keep those promises and trudge those miles and then sink into a temporary (not permanent) sleep.

He knew the rules. He chose to break them-- for a very specific effect. That effect could happen only if he could trust that most readers would know how it "should" be punctuated, and stop and wonder why the comma was left out.

This is one of the great techniques we have when we craft and refine our own voice. We can know the conventional rules and the conventional and usually appropriate effects they will have.

And then we can choose to subvert the rules to achieve a different effect. 

It's not just breaking the rules to be defiant or because we're ignorant... but accepting the rules, knowing that they create a conventional meaning, knowing that now the reader-- trained in the conventions-- will be surprised and thoughtful in discovering this new meaning.

We are in control of our own voice. But we need to take control. We need to know more about the language and how it can be manipulated-- and most important, we need to know how the reader will interpret our choices.

Well, heck, time to go read that whole poem. I encountered this first in 5th grade at St. Aidan's School in Boston. Interestingly, the nun (nuns weren't known then for cross-curricular pedagogical innovations) Sister Hugh had us put this poem to music, and I could still sing our ballad if you want. (You don't.) I thought it was the most beautiful poem in the world then. (I'm still pretty in love with it.)

Tone in fiction

I'm thinking about tone now, because I'm teaching a Scenes class, and tone is important in scenes. But... but what IS tone? It's not voice. It's not character. It's not plot. Related to all those, surely.

I'm thinking tone is more about effect-- the mood this is meant to create in the reader, and everything that goes into creating that mood is tone.

What do you think? Examples? Ideas? How is it different from voice? Help! Is there a corollary in music?

I'm going to make a list of tones I've found in book lately. I'd say there's usually a connection to sub-genre (that is, you wouldn't have a rollicking tone in a suspense novel), but I'm not entirely sure how one-to-one that is, if there's really only one basic tone per sub-genre. Anyway, types of tone-- are these too "individual" for use in explanation? Any to add?
Inquisitive
Rollicking
Thoughtful
Ponderous
Slapstick
Wry
 Rambunctious
Slow
Quiet
 Tense
Intense
Excruciating
Suspenseful
Comedic
Intellectual
Emotional
Restrained
Dignified
Haughty
Adventurous
Risky
Spooky
Conversational
Argumentative
Cautious
Legalistic
Carefree
Joyous

As I type those, I realize that I'm trying to capture in a word the -experience- of the books I'm thinking of. That is, when I think about, say, the Charles Paris mystery I just read, it's a "wry" experience-- humorous but understated and ironic.
Alicia

Thoughts? Additions? Examples? Arguments?

Precision increases plausibility

You know what connects sentences with characterization?
Precision.  When you're precise in your word choice, we'll believe that you really know this character.

Vague words make us doubt whether this person exists, because if this person listens to "a song," or just picks up "some book" or puts her socks in "a bag", well, maybe someone who uses such generic stuff is generic herself.

You don't have to get too ornate here. Just think. If you're in Paul's POV, and he scrolls down his playlist and chooses "a old goldie song," well, you know, the real Paul would know what song he chose. 
And if Paula puts her socks into a bag, well, it wouldn't even have to be in Paula's POV. Anyone who can see her action can see whether she puts it into "her handbag" or "a plastic bag" or "her suitcase."

And if Mike picks up "a book," he might pick up a paperback or a Bible or road atlas, or a red book or a blue book....

Theresa talked about "spark," and for me part of this is diction-- word choice. You have control here. This doesn't require a huge vocabulary, but rather observation (or invention).  Without this level of precision, prose sounds slack, without tension, without "snap."  With precision, it'll sound like there's a real person there, not just ink on paper.
Alicia

When to use modifiers

Just a minor note as I edit this chapter-- I'm a firm believer in making use of modifiers. Pace, EB White! The language wouldn't have evolved to have adjectives and adverbs if they weren't useful!

However, even I think too much is, well, too much. Sometimes a modifier is an unnecessary and distracting amplification of what's already there.  For example, I had:
Felicity slid the heavy box to the floor and used her foot to push it down the hall.

Well, obviously, if she has to push it with her foot, it's heavy. So I don't need the "heavy."

That said, I'm editing a Regency in the Georgette Heyer tradition.
The sort of stripped down style that might be fashionable now and useful for fast-paced adventure novel won't work in a more leisurely, "voice-driven" social comedy.  That's why we all (including me :) must be careful about issuing edicts about what constitutes effective writing. After all, what is effective in one kind of book might not work in another. I can't even imagine trying to write any comedy, especially social comedy, without adjectives and adverbs (which, because they "modify," carry much of the humor), but more than a couple absolutely essential modifiers will slow down an action book.  Multiple point-of-view will probably destroy the character identification needed for a psychological drama, but will add to the suspense perhaps of a thriller.  With the rise of the internet and the many niches created (knitting mysteries, Midwestern white bread family sagas :), it's more important than ever to know the type of book and what the readers above all enjoy about this sort of book.  What a non-historical saga reader might consider a distraction might be exactly what the typical historical saga reader loves most.

So whatever rules we all espouse aren't really rules-- just thought points that might not be relevant to your story, but might inspire some consideration which might help you enhance aspects of your own voice.

Alicia

Interlocking Dialogue -- Stimulus/Response

Just came across another example of dialogue exchanges that could be improved.  Here's the original:

He frowned. “You were in that class? I never managed to finish the term paper. Railroad schedules in Victorian Sussex. I remember the topic."

“I sat in the third row.”
 
 Just one of those bits of business. Probably the author wanted to imbed the idea that they were in this class together, or drop a clue about his knowledge of railroads or something.  But notice that the continuity of the question ("you were in that class?") and the answer ("I sat in the third row") is broken by the guy talking about his fascinating term paper.  Not a big deal, but it interferes with the reader's smooth reading of your narrative. And unless there's a reason to have the sentence elements this way, why be jagged?

So two options I can see:
1) Put the question at the end. Might have to rewrite a bit to make it clear the question is delayed because he's ruminating or reminiscing before he remembers his manners and makes the connection:

"I never managed to finish the term paper for that class. Railroad schedules in Victorian Sussex. I remember the topic." He frowned. “So you were in that class? "

“I sat in the third row.”

Moving the "he frowned" and adding "So" makes that question sound more like a conclusion or thought he came to as he recalled the course.

2) Have her respond not really to that question, but something he says at the end of his dialogue bit, like:
He frowned. “You were in that class? I never managed to finish the term paper. Railroad schedules in Victorian Sussex. Probably still have the incomplete on my record."

“I got an A.”

 There. She agrees she was in the class and adds a bit of information, which propels the story forward an inch or so, and does a bit of character differentiation (he got an incomplete, she got an A, or rather, he doesn't even remember the grade, and she does).


NOT a big deal. But the reader is going to notice a jagged stimulus/response diad if you don't. So train yourself to "hear" as you write or revise.  The fixes are usually minor and easy, once you notice the problem. 


You're in charge, remember. You might not be in charge of the plot or character (you know how things get out of hand), but you're completely in charge of these minor bits of narration. If you want to be known the elegance or eloquence of your voice, here's a place to start.  


But let me ask-- When you're reading, how sensitive are you to voice? How sensitive to these relatively minor (except perhaps to me and certainly to Theresa :) narration issues?


Alicia

Sound of words

Just attended a lecture by Shakespeare actor/director/professor Tim Hardy (great), and he mentioned something about how words sound creating a particular effect. He mentioned doing a comedy where for some reason the actor had to say (as the punchline of a joke) the names of two New England states, Vermont and New Hampshire. One time he said it backwards, first New Hampshire, and then Vermont, and it didn't get much of a laugh. The next performance he got it right, Vermont then New Hampshire, and got a huge laugh. They were puzzling over the difference in response, because it didn't matter to the joke itself which came first.

He mentioned this to the comic playwright Neil Simon, who said immediately, "You can't end with Vermont, because Vermont isn't funny." He didn't mean the state (which isn't more or less funny), but rather the sound.  "Hampshire" is funny, see, because of that P in the middle.

Mr. Simon averred that propulsive letters (P, B, and F), the ones that SPIT, are inherently funny, and that an ending word with one of those will cause more laughter. (Also said that "L" was NOT a funny sound, which is funny, because, you know, "laugh.")

This goes along with my thought that ending words in sentences and especially paragraphs are either "upbeat" or "downbeat," and that an upbeat ending ("Okay?") calls for a downbeat ending ("Yeah, okay."). The sound of words-- even in written prose!-- causes an emotional and mental effect on the listener/reader, and if we want to have "natural" sounding prose and especially dialogue, we should be aware of that (unless we do it naturally, in which case we shouldn't mess with it... but if we're ever accused of having "wooden or stilted" prose, we're probably not doing this naturally).

Sound matters, even in written prose.... and it matters even more with sophisticated readers, and editors and agents (and bookbuyers) are usually sophisticated readers!

Alicia

Concrete and specific

Credibility is about concreteness. We believe this is happening because the specificity of the details indicates that this is really happening, that only experiencing this situation would lead to such vivid observations.

Read this blog entry about "what it's like being poor" by s/f writer John Scalzi, and I bet it's clear that this is someone who has been poor. We believe this because the details are so precise.

But also imagine that you're writing about a kid who is growing up poor. Notice how many of these precise details could be used to infuse a scene (like the kid getting ready for school) with immediacy (she's getting ready, and her mom is making toast for her, and a roach walks across the bread, and both of them pretend not to notice because they can't afford to throw the bread out).

This is an aspect of voice, I think--the precision of detail. The desire to get so real, to make the fictional scene come alive, that's voice. It's not just the word choice, it's the recognition of the importance of getting the reality in there.

More poetry reading

There's nothing that improves your voice like listening to great poetry. :)

Worldview and story approach

I know I'm the only one obsessed with this, LOL. But I'm exploring the issue of how worldview-- comprehensive attitude, values, and viewpoints on the author's part-- influences the voice, and in fact is a part of the voice.

Now this comes to me because, as I've said before, I'm trying to get more of an understanding of the 2008 economic crisis, just for the heck of it-- or rather because I think it's emblematic of so much of what TODAY is, and everyone just breathed a sigh of relief that the worst didn't happen, and has moved on to other problems. It's like we gave a disaster and not only did no one come, no one even read the notice in the newspaper.

One book was about the HP "spying" scandal, and it's very narrow in scope, focusing very tightly on the boardmembers-- not on the company or the industry that might have caused the level of suspicion that leads to industrial spying. There was almost no discussion of the context, of what this all meant.

The narrowness of scope, I think, says something about the worldview. That is, the author just isn't interested in the big picture, in, say, indicting capitalism or big business. He's also not interested in exploring how the computer industry works, or the rivalries that have shaped it. He doesn't think of the issue as being the extension of historic forces, or the inevitable if regrettable result of the American culture, or even a sign of our decadent materialism or our readiness to innovate. In the "person-focused" scope, the worldview is that it's the people who matter, and they matter because of their position, not because of anything they do or cause.

Anyway, I keep reading books, trying to find someone, anyone, who has an important insight as to how this happened and what it means. Alas, this quest is hampered by the fact that most of the books are written by journalists or bankers, and neither of those professions seems to reward deep insight. And let's face it-- you can hardly expect a bracing critique of capitalism or even finance from those whose paychecks depend on Wall Street being Wall Street.

But I do think that it's more than self-interest that means so many of these books end up being insightless-- long on "what happened," and short on "why". I think it might be our worldview that makes us choose one profession over another, one interest over another. And that worldview is going to affect how we view a situation or present it or explore it.

One way to understand worldview is to do exactly this, to read a bunch of books about the same subject. It works better with non-fiction, probably, because the reality observed presumably doesn't change, so differences are usually attributable to the author's particular viewpoint-- what he/she chooses to discuss, and how. But it can work in fiction too, when there are several books that treat the same subject differently.

Example: The Middle Ages in Europe. Bernard Cornwell has a very different approach than Ken Follett. They're both interested in how cultures dealt with the transition brought by advances in engineering and technology, and how these affected the move towards individualism that would be the central attitude in the Renaissance.

However, Cornwell chooses to look at men at war, and the technology he deals with is the technology of weaponry and military strategy. Follett is much more interested in "ordinary people" deeply involved in the feudal and religious society, and his technology is about building of cathedrals-- a massive task, sure, but very much in the middle of the medieval world. Cornwell's characters are on the outside, in their own culture (military), where Follett's characters live in their corner of the wider world. Cornwell's characters are trying to conquer, where Follett's characters are trying to build (a cathedral). Both of these were actually quite important activities in the Middle Ages, a time of strife and construction. So they each prefer a "realistic" presentation, and this leads to minute and careful accuracy in description. Let's just say, neither of them are likely to introduce zombies into the landscape for some new kind of conflict.

However, what they choose to be realistic about reflects something about their worldview, I think. What? Well, I think part of it might be about whether they look more closely at individuals or groups, individual action or systems, whether there's more emphasis on how the people affect the culture, or how the culture affects the people.

The worldviews of both the authors, then, is focused on as much as possible (within fiction) accurately reflecting the real life of the characters in their Middle-Ages world. This reflects, I think, a worldview that privileges accuracy and realism, that the best historical fiction is that which most reflects history.

Contrast that with, say, Ellis Peters' long series of medieval histories. Peters also has a focus on characters rather than systems or processes or cultures. But while her handling of the medieval world is detailed and sure, her disinterest in "realism" rather than "believability" is shown in her choice of character and story type. After all, while the Middle Ages was famously brutal, probably there weren't actually quite as many interesting murders in one small city even so. And Brother Cadfael reflects far more the time he was created (the 1960s) than the time he supposedly inhabits (the 12th Century)-- he is a peace-loving, scientific minded hippie, really. Now this is not to diss these mysteries, which are wonderful. (I love them far, far more than the Cornwell and Follett books, which I suspect reflects MY worldview. :) Point is, Peters isn't really interested in faithfully replicating history-in-fiction. She is interested most in how humans interact, how small societies work, how people compromise their individualities in order to live in communities. While her stories are deeply imbedded in their time (the British Civil War -- the second one, Maude v. Stephen-- is going on throughout most of the series), they could be moved to another time with some modifications and work just fine. Her worldview is not a historical one, but a psychological/sociological one. She thinks the basic elements of humanity haven't changed that much, that young people will always fall in love, that old men will always think they know most everything, that people want to be liked, that the ones who prefer to be feared will end up with the power.

In fact, that's sort of my worldview too, and that's why, no doubt, I re-read these books constantly. I think probably the author whose worldview matches with yours is probably the one you love. :)

Okay, so anyway, by examining several books that are about the same topic, you can get a better idea of how worldview affects how the author presents the book. This has a parallel, btw, in the study of history. History, like fiction, has such a huge scope, so many possibilities for exploration, that most historians have to decide on an approach or worldview. These aren't mutually exclusive, but historians do tend to have an inherent focus, I think. I learned this when I worked at the state historical society, where one of my colleagues was fascinated with people (we were writing the history of newspapers in the state, and she loved finding out that one editor had moved in 1854 from the Madison Democrat to the Bloomington Herald). Another was obsessed with old systems, like how trains were scheduled.

There are many of these historical approaches, but I think the ones we novelists would recognize are:
The great man approach (focusing on Napoleon, say, the major figures who affected the event)
The everyman approach (finding how events affected the regular people in a society)
The systems approach (looking at how groups and governments changed things and responded to change)
The social evolution approach (societies are evolving, and history is the story of how a society evolves)

What intrigues me is how so many of these business books are relentlessly person-focused. It's weird, because it's like the "great man" approach in that these CEOs and stocktraders are presented as being worthy of the most minute description (this one was a valedictorian, that one skis at Aspen, this one drives a sports car). These are the men (always men :) who create and fuel the economy, smarter (and richer, but deserving) than the rest of us. Somehow in their biographies must be some answer to ... well, what? What happened? No, because usually the books that go into such exhaustive detail about where these titans of finance holiday accept without much question that none of these guys had any idea what was coming. The collapse of the industry is presented as something like the tsunami, an unexpected and devastating event. This might seem paradoxical, that these men were so clueless and helpless, and yet somehow are worthy of the Great Man treatment.

Now I would think that an exploration of systems (how the regulatory system failed, say, or how the marketing of mortgages to those who couldn't afford them came to be so essential to the economy) would probably get us closer to "what happened". That's the sort of book the economist Paul Krugman wrote, long on substance, short on sizzle. While this probably isn't any more fascinating than "This CEO went to Princeton, was Jamie Dimon's assistant at Citibank, and favored English tailoring and was ever known for his ascots," it has the virtue of stressing and finding causation as a worldview. "There is a reason this happened!" means "We can prevent it happening again!" So it's an oddly optimistic worldview, emphasizing the power of human-made structures to affect even the most complex situations.

But others might think that everything is socio-cultural, that what's interesting is exploring how a culture or society changes, how the culture beliefs and values cause something to happen. That's sort of what Michael Lewis does in his article about how Iceland's cod fishermen got bored with fishing and turned to currency trading, thereby bankrupting the country. What people are featured are usually presented as representatives of a certain group (bored cod fishermen); the culture is the star, and how people interact with the culture is shown to be central.

What of these would translate well into fiction? Well, one already has. A long article about the collapse of Bear Stearns (the first investment canary to falter in the CDO mineshaft) suggests darkly that a conspiracy was at the root of this. While the conspiracy theory worldview might not seem entirely plausible in non-fiction, it translates perfectly to fiction. Notice that the Oliver Stone Wall Street sequel bases the initiating event on just such a conspiracy (though it's not developed nearly as well, IMHO, as in the article-- note to Mr. Stone, merely announcing a conspiracy isn't enough). Is that a worldview? Yes. An author who (in reality or just when writing) thinks that disasters are the results of conspiracies is merging two common worldviews-- everything is connected, and no one can be trusted (or humans are innately bad).

This has gotten long enough! I will explore worldview and subtext in another post. Point is, anyway, that whether you recognize it or not, your worldview is a determinant of what you write and how you approach the topic, and demonstrate the assumptions you make about the world and people. How conscious of this are you? How conscious should you be?

Alicia

Le mot juste

The right word... well, a single word can convey a lot. There are words with connotations that can come across as positive or negative. Connotation can be situation-dependent, so what is positive in one context can be negative in another. That's why precision of language can be so important, because some words mean more than what they mean.

I was reading an article about family money issues. It was just one of those articles you read while waiting for your car to be repaired, you know? But this one posed a question and then asked regular people what they thought. The question was, "If you help one of your children out financially, should you tell the others?"

Hmm. Good question, especially in this time of financial insecurity for young people. One of the respondents said, "Yes, you should tell the other children, because you shouldn't keep secrets from them."

Another said, "If you help one child out, you should keep it confidential."

Now I was struck by that, because (as usual) I agreed with whatever I was reading. (I'm really easy.) Oh, right! Keeping secrets is bad! Oh. Right. Keeping confidentiality is good.

Hmm. Okay, so I didn't actually come to a decision about this issue. But I did notice that both respondents used the same word (keep) and then another word that means the same basic thing. One talked of "keep secrets" and the other said "keep confidential."

Both those refer to the very same action: Doing something and saying nothing about it.

But from one view, that's "keeping secrets" and bad, and from the other view, that's "keeping confidentiality" and good.

For the writer, the existence of "connoted terms" like "secret" and "confidentiality" can be another tool in the toolbox. Those who live or die by rhetoric already know this. They know that the language is full of paired synonyms, one which could be positive in this context, and one which would be negative. And the one you choose can give a boost to the tone or feel of your sentence or paragraph.

Let's work on some of these pairs, just for fun. The ladies (talk about a connoted term :) will recall a list of masculine and feminine attributes that were actually the same:
Men are determined; women are stubborn.
Men are ambitious; women are pushy.
and there were reversals, where the attribute that was positive in women was negative in men:
Women are gentle; men are weak.
Women are nurturing; men are needy.

Okay, enough old-line feminism. :) Point is, if you want to make determination a negative, call it "stubbornness," right?

So what are some pairs like that?

My kids point out that the word "youth" almost always is connected to something negative, while "teen" is a pretty positive term, and "young adult" is quite positive.

How about "moral" and "moralistic?" Okay, they might mean something different, but how much of the difference is actual, and how much is connotation? That is, I might think (insert famous preacher's name) is "moralistic," but I bet he thinks he's "moral." The words have slightly different meanings, though the same basic meaning, and the connotation will probably be negative or positive.

"Interrogation" and "questioning or asking." Have you ever tried in a friendly fashion to get information out of a youth, I mean teen? He says, "Stop interrogating me!" and you say, all injured innocence, "I'm just asking!"

Even colors. I remember buying a lovely sweater that the boutique owner described as "citrine," but my dad called "baby shit yellow."

What about "escape" (positive) and "abscond" (negative)?

"Praise" and "flattery?"

What are some others, and how would you take advantage of their connotations in sentences or passages? How about dialogue?

Alicia

The Medium Is the Message

I was recently teaching a class in voice in fiction, which is one of the amorphous topics that even I doubt can be taught. But something I meant to say and forgot is (quoting McLuhan): The medium is the message. He meant, most likely (I skipped that class :), that the technology and/or the genre embeds meaning into whatever is being broadcast, so that a story will have a different message when it's told on Dateline NBC as a sort of docudrama than it would in a novel, that the mode of broadcast will in itself become the message (the Dateline message might be, We want you to believe this, even though we pretty much made it up; while the novel might say, I made this up, but it's got a truth truer than fact, for example). This becomes even more important now when we have so many forms of media, and "truth" depends a lot on the medium and much less on the intrinsic originating "message".

Okay, that's what he meant. That's not what I mean. I mean that the mode of expression, the voice, if you will, is the message, or at least should be the message, or by complicating or denying the perceived message becomes an alternate message. That is, how you choose to present the information is part of what the reader will absorb in accepting (or creating) the meaning of something you present.

Don't worry. I'll keep writing until this makes some sense!

1. Well, first I think that if we have little to say about this whatever, we tend to choose vapid or empty ways to say it, and the reader senses our lack of engagement. It will show in our lazy presentation, in our simplistic sentences, in the cliches we use to express what we haven't actually examined deeply. We are alienated from our own meaning, and that's the message the reader will get, that this isn't worth any effort. So a lack of "medium," that is, a prose passage that shows a writer just settling for ease of delivery, will result in a lack of message, for not a lot of importance is likely to be expressed without originality.

Interestingly, I see this often in scene openings, and I think what has happened is that the writer is trying to just get into the scene, trusting that at some point it will catch fire, that he will channel this character (talk about the medium :) or find the voice or realize what this is all about... and maybe at some point, the writer does achieve that union of medium and message, and the passage really gets going.

But if that's so, the writer should go back and rewrite the damned opening. And no one lecture me about voice and how whatever pearls flow from your fingers onto the keyboard are "natural". Sometimes "natural" prose is bored and uninspired. And that's bad at any point in the scene, but it's particularly bad at the beginning, when the reader needs more meaning to understand what is to come-- not necessarily more information, but more something. Take a boring passage, a vapid delivery, cliches, unimaginative sentences as a sign that you haven't challenged yourself enough to find the true medium or voice here. Think about what you want to convey. Consider who this character is. Think about what this situation is.

2. Sometimes the passage is workable deep point of view, faithfully replicating the POV character's thoughts. But characters can have boring thoughts! Characters can sit down on the couch and think about what they had at dinner and feel their stomachs protest and think in commercials: "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." Characters can notice that it's raining and think, "Rain, rain go away. Come again some other day." There's nothing particularly magical about deep POV; if the POV character is being boring, the passage will probably be boring.

The solution there is to make something happen. You never have to narrate every blasted moment. Skip over the moments where nothing is happening and go to the moment when something is going to happen. Or make something happen. He's gotten up groaning from the dinner table and is about to open his mouth to say something boring, and his wife breaks a glass and cuts her hand. Or he opens his mouth to say something boring and belches-- in front of his son's elegant prospective in-laws.

Another solution is to change the setting or situation to force more conflict. Yes, it's dinner, but it's at a restaurant far fancier than he's used to. Or it's the first dinner he has made for a new girlfriend, and he realizes as he gets up that she didn't eat anything and probably didn't like it.

3. What's thought can usually be said. And anything said aloud can be heard, and cause reaction and change. This is particularly important in relationship books, where the relationship changes because of the character interaction. Intemperate speech, threats, ultimatums, provocation, casual revelations, inadvertent utterances-- anything that can cause trouble will cause trouble. But it has to be spoken so it can't be taken back. Put the conflict out there, on the page. If the character is careful and never says anything without thinking, well, put him in a situation where he speaks out without restraint. You're in charge, don't forget. You can set it up that even the most close-mouthed character can be led to speak.

4. Okay, so there's conflict in the scene! Good! Go for it! But remember that HOW you express is as important as what you express. The medium is part of that message. So experiment. If you're in deep POV, think about how this person might mentally express this. An example is in Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, where one character uses legalisms to explain why she cheated on her husband, as if she's making a case in a court of law.

A character who is into "accounting," both the professional and the personal kind, might add up all the evidence and arrive at "the bottom line". Another character might list the pros and cons of a decision-- and yes, you can even express this as a chart the character jots down, with pro on one side and con on the other. Experiment, for goodness sake. It's not like you have much to lose.

Challenge yourself to express this in a vigorous, vivid way. Yes, most of the story will (should) probably be pretty standard narrative. But whenever you find that you've got a boring passage,
when your medium has no message, think about enlivening it by finding the conflict, or forcing the conflict, or creating some conflict, and then by using the situation or character to express this in an intriguing way.

Don't listen to those people who say, "Plot is all that matters." No. SCENE matters, and that involves more than some eventual event-- it involves interaction and action and presentation and conflict. Challenge yourself to go beyond your first draft. Rethink. Reinvent. Experiment. Put it on the page.

Alicia

Voice examples-- put money where mouth is

Everyone post two paragraphs (200 words or less total) that you think represents your voice. That's my only guideline—this sounds like you, or the best of you.

Now everyone, respond with a description of another voice (identify name). Please, no critiquing, no assessment. This is just about describing a voice. So look for words that express what this sounds like, what this feels like. You can use food, music, poetry, whatever. You can compare it to someone else's voice (in fiction, poetry, or music). You don't have to be coherent. :)

What? You think I need this for a class? Huh? Would I do that?

Alicia

What's your voice?

I'm working on a class on voice, and I've gotten interested in how writers characterize their own voices. What words would you use to describe your voice?
I'm particularly interested in how you think your attitude or worldview affects your voice (like if you're pessimistic) or if you think your voice exhibits a worldview you don't share (like you're really an optimistic, but your voice is sort of grimly humorous).

Also, is your voice YOU? Or do you sort of have a persona-voice, you know, more knowing and erudite than you yourself? Is that possible?

If you write more in character voice, how does this reflect your own voice?

I don't know... but if you have thoughts about how your voice works, love to hear them!
Alicia

In defense of modifiers

I just had another student who said, "But I thought we weren't supposed to use adjectives and adverbs!"

Ahem. So I thought maybe I'd perambulate (or percolate?) about modifiers a bit. I'm re-reading a great Georgette Heyer novel (The Reluctant Widow), and marvelling at her adroit use of modifiers to create irony, so of course I'm not going to say that modifiers are bad.

Besides, as you know, I don't think things end up in our language for no reason, rather that every part of speech can add to our sentence meaning and we should never ever ever give up any potential meaning tool. But of course, adjectives and adverbs must be used wisely, and they are more likely than nouns or verbs to be used unwisely.

A couple thoughts about "unwise"--
1) Strong verbs and nouns don't usually need modification or intensification-- you know, you generally don't want "She stared steadily" or "The sky-blue turquoise."
2) "Purple" prose usually is a result of too much intensification: "He immediately felt a passionate upswelling of deep patriotism, and turned adoringly to the bonnie bright flag of his beloved country." What words are essential for conveying your meaning? And be ruthless-- surely they're not ALL essential. We tend to over-modify when we're describing, especially a setting, so pull back and see if you can find other ways to describe, like maybe don't rely so much on -words-. The character's emotional and physical reactions (fear, reverence) can tell a lot, along with positioning (she had to look UP to see the label on the file drawer).

But adverbs and adjectives are useful in many situations. Make them interesting. Couple interesting "emotion" adverbs with action. Heyer has a character "poke rather vindictively at the fire." (The "vindictive" is funny, the "rather" is totally in character, for he's a repressed fellow.) This man also "smiles grimly" and inquires of his brother's health "in his brusque way". In fact, a lot of how I know this man is from the modifiers. Why? Because he is repressed, as I said, and behaves with decorum, and the only way the Real Him leaks out is along the edges. He smiles because that's why you're supposed to do when you're introduced to someone. But he shows his displeasure by smiling grimly.

That is, don't just strew modifiers in there. Use them to tell the reader more about the character. I had a villain once who was coming across as bumbling, which is NOT the way I wanted him to come across. I was on deadline, though, and couldn't afford a full re-write. So I just went through and changed out the modifiers associated with him, and added a few more nefarious ones. So he no longer moved "timidly," he moved "guardedly"- a small change, but an important one. It worked. He now seemed more dangerous, because he was "guarded".

Adverbs and adjectives are part of a process of "modifying" the prose to make it more individual. (He doesn't just smile, he smiles sunnily.) Now of course, you can overdo that, but one suggestion is to use other parts of speech to modify the action or character. For example, look at the verbs and see if they can incorporate a bit of modification, maybe even metaphor. He narrowed his eyes is another way of saying he regarded her narrowly. The point is to make the experience precise and fitted to the character and the action at this moment.

That, of course, and I'm going to say "begs the question," even though we've established in a previous post that I'm misusing the term. It's still a good idea-- that sometimes something is presented that almost requires you to ask a followup question. So how can we say that?? Anyway, the question is, when is it precise and when is it purple? I am in favor of drafting it YOUR way, whether spare or elaborate, and adding or subtracting as needed.

Irony can result from juxtaposing a verb that goes one way with an adverb that goes another. He smiled hatefully. She laughed joylessly. I also like (don't overdo :) imbedding emotion in modifiers, like, "She held out a tentative hand." Modifiers should modify, change the meaning of the unmodified word-- change it to mean what you want to mean.

Now I'm not advising you all to use a lot of modifiers. They show up a lot more in omniscient viewpoint because generally, that level of nuance of observation requires some distance. So if you're in deep POV, think through the urge to modify verbs and nouns and do only what your POV character would do.

But I'm also wanting to affirm the importance of individual voice here. All those edicts about not using adverbs and adjectives? Well, you know, I tend to discount the notion that people can interfere with a writer's voice, that critique groups and editors and teachers can mess with a good strong voice. But then I hear these edicts, and I think, gee, what if I had an editor who told me to cut every adverb? What if my critique group was death on adjectives? Yeah, I think that could mess with your voice.

After all, "voice" isn't about conformity. Yes, of course, conform to the grammatical rules (most of the time :), but a lot of writers are making new rules for each other, rules that aren't rules, that end up limiting narrative and prose options. But we're not supposed to all sound alike! And the stripped-down, unadorned prose that results when modifiers are banned, well, that's not what some of us want to create. So... if you ever tell other writers not to use modifiers, stop. Sure, point out if the prose is verging on purple, if there's a better way to convey the meaning, if the sentence is overcomplicated. But don't impose rules that narrow the allowable WORDS wholesale like that.

I don't want our fictional discourse to be reduced to one type of voice-- clean, contemporary, undecorated. That's a fine type of voice. It is not, however, the best or only voice. We all grew up reading voices that were more elaborate, that reveled in using five words when sometimes one would do, that gloried in intensifying and even exaggerating. The voices were created by writers named Wharton and Faulkner and Heyer and Dunnett and Fitzgerald and Milne, and they're all still read and enjoyed, and worthy of influencing writers for many decades to come.

So never say never. We should all keep that in mind. I know I'm an offender in this regard, because I will occasionally unleash an edict. But at base, there are no rules beyond "make it good." And if we can make it good-- if our voices are strong and individual and convey the story, then our critiquers and teachers should mostly be helping us make it more consistent and more meaningful-- not a different type of voice, just the best this voice can be.

That's not to say, goodness knows, that anything goes, that the fact you typed it with your very own fingers means it's good or even your voice. A writer's voice is no more "natural" than a singer's voice, and is invented and refined more than found. But that's our task, to create a voice. And I hate to reduce our options for producing something new by deeming certain words or parts of speech out of order.

Now I want to ask... I'd always heard about "bland voices" and "generic voices," and being, you know, kind of a bleeding heart liberal type, I would think, "No way! Everyone has a voice! No one is generic!" Then I judged a contest with many entries, and some actually had... no voice. (That is better than a BAD voice, of course, I think.) They didn't take advantage of any technique for infusing more drama and emotion into their sentences. They didn't try to find just the right word or just the right combination of words. The approximate was fine. The voices were mostly characterized by vagueness. I would sort of get the point... but not get the experience. Often the mechanics were adequate (sometimes not), but there seemed to be no attempt to invigorate the very basic prose or select an approach to the scene that would make more than a sequence of events.

It was an interesting experience, and made me think that voice isn't just how we sound, but the choice we make to individualize our understanding and presentation of the story, so that we're the only one who can write it this way. But I think we have to strive to achieve that sometimes, especially if we don't have a naturally intriguing voice.

(And my voice requires adverbs and adjectives, so there.)
Alicia

Well, you know, sort of

Seth said...

I prefer to write for characters, rather than to write for rules. If a certain character is our POV character, then I would use a sharper version of that character's voice as my narrative style. If they would end a sentence in a preposition, it usually reads better to just let them.

If you have a more pulled back narrative, of course, that's a different style. But I think character voice is far more important than author voice.

This is such a good point, and let's talk about it. (This is, btw, why I say that deep POV isn't for everyone or every book-- you really have to cede a certain amount of "voice" to the POV character, and you might not want to do that.) Let's say your POV character (first- or third-person) is not the most incisive narrator. Let's say he/she is really pedantic, or sort of vague and spacey, and the narrative voice reflects that.

Can we have some examples? Here's mine:

She just didn't know, okay? She kind of thought that she was sort of someone he cared about. But not like you could tell it from the way he said things. He probably said the same things to other girls, you know? So, anyway, she was maybe taking a chance trusting him with what she had to trust him with. But life was risk, right?


Okay, maybe I channeled a few of my freshman students there. :)

Let's have some other examples! This is for, um, un-sharp or un-pleasant or "bad" voices. Give us a quick (first try) example, and then write about what you'd change if you were revising-- NOT to revise into a more author-voice, but to make this person a better -narrator- (not just character). Help?

Now what I mean is-- We already have dialogue to show how a character sounds, to reveal this character's inattention and inarticulation. So we don't need this person to be the POV character, the narrator, unless she brings something to the narration. So what does she bring?

One thing I notice in re-reading that is the paragraph tells us almost nothing. (And understand, I couldn't bear to write a book or even a scene in this POV, so I am immediately revising, and you might not do that. Depends on what we want!) So right from the first, I look at that lame preposition-ending, and I think-- so what does she have to trust him with?

Maybe we know, or maybe I can insert that without losing the flavor of her voice. Let's see:
So, anyway, she was maybe taking a chance trusting him with what she had to trust him with. Her secret. You know. The whole murder thing.

That still has the prep, but at least I feel like I'm imparting a bit of information-- by the end of the paragraph, the reader knows more not just about the character but also about the story (murder, I guess).

I can't help it. I have to get rid of at least one preposition-ending.
She just didn't know, okay? She kind of thought that maybe he sort of cared about her. Maybe.


I have to say I like all the "kind of" "sort of" vagueness, just because that's sort of an amusing take on the utter inarticulateness of some people. They could be talking about undying love, or they could be talking about a load of mulch for the backyard-- same diction. (But really, I don't think I could write-- or read-- pages of that.) But she could be sharper and give more info without totally compromising her authenticity, because we don't know if he's a potential lover, or her father:

She just didn't know, okay? She kind of thought that she was sort of someone he cared about, not in a romantic way, yeah, more like a friend. But not like you could tell it from the way he talked to her. Sure, he joked around and said some flirty things. But he probably said the same sweet things to other girls, you know?

Does adding those adjectives to "things" (sorry, it hurts to type that word :) get in the way of her voice? I like to think that identifying the relationship in her mind (not romantic, more like a friend) helps deepen the understanding. And we can see he says flirty, sweet things, so we don't imagine him saying insulting or smarmy things, I guess.

So I guess I'd start with the free-writing to "feel" her voice, than go back and add and subtract so that the passage says what I want it to say to advance the story just a bit. That is, it's not going go be enough for me to have the passage just show her voice or reveal that she's incapable of articulating a complete thought. It might be enough if there was only a few paragraphs in her POV-- but if she's the narrator, she's got to keep the story moving too. And a tiny advance every paragraph, surrounded by a bunch of "voice," well, actually, that is totally my problem. Really. I don't write characters as inarticulate as that, but I have to say, I also take a long time saying much (much prettier prose, of course), so my passages and scenes are long. Hmm.

Anyway, how about some examples of deep POV voices that aren't, shall we say, OUR voice-- and are lame and limping and all that. And then, would you make any changes in revision?
Alicia

These are a few of our favorite things...

Sometimes I get captured by a voice, and this time it's not Pavarotti, but the Pavarotti of bloggers, James Wolcott. Sometimes he says things so eloquently and ironically, I want to preserve it. (But that, I suppose, is why they have archives.)
Alicia

Who is teaching this stuff?

Sometimes Theresa and I will consult on some odd prose thingy that has suddenly popped up in nearly every submission we get, and one of us will say, "Who is teaching this stuff?" That's because whenever many submissions have some feature that we don't actually see in many published books, we suspect (perhaps wrongly) that there's some influential teacher or editor or agent or big name writer who suggested this in some interview or class, and the suggestion has bounced from writer to writer, critique group to critique group, and suddenly half the writers out there have added this whatever to their voice arsenal.

Maybe that's unfair. Maybe every writer who uses this independently and simultaneously developed it. Maybe every single one of them just developed their voice in that direction. I don't know. Maybe a whole bunch of writers just got a blast from their muse: "Start half your sentences with present participles! It's variety!"

But I think someone is teaching these things.

This year I'm getting a bunch of submissions with doubled terms, usually predicates.
She spoke, muttered, "Get out of my sight."
The cat jumped, leaped for the window.

But I'm also seeing this in modifiers:
He moved quickly, rapidly.
Her face was red, pink with frustration.

A few thoughts here:
1) A teacher of course should never say, "Don't learn from others," so I won't say that. I also won't say, "Voice can't be taught," though I think that's true-- voice can't be taught, but it can be refined and developed, and certainly the input and wisdom and example of others can help with that.
However, whatever you learn and apply should be something that fits your voice, that helps (especially the Almost There writers who have already developed skills at plotting and characterization) individualize your voice in an attractive way. That actually is not likely to be the same thing that a hundred other writers are suddenly using-- how can you individualize your voice if you're doing the same thing everyone else is doing? So when someone passes on some cool new prose thing, really examine whether it fits in with your voice, whether your voice is evolving in that direction. Some prose innovations really don't go with some voices.
If, for example, you like to replicate the character voice, well, really, does it make sense that ALL your characters would suddenly start talking and thinking with this new construction?
Or if you have a rather formal voice, is it likely a NEW trend is going to be formal?
Or if you have a casual, conversational voice, is this new trend going to fit that? I doubt it, because most of these trends tend to lead to rather arcane and artificial constructions which are not going to be conversational-- they are more "writerly".

So just consider that a prose trend from a spam email sent to every writer in the world (I'm figuring that's how it gets transmitted: "To My Beloved Writter" heading: "Dear one. I am Sir Justice Legatt, the literary Executor for the esteemed Late Mrs. Louise Backover, the Nobel Prize Winning Writer. When she died last year of a Broken Heart, she left in my trust a manuscript that is certain to earn $1oooooo. I was given your name as a distinguished author who might be looking for a partnership....") isn't likely to be appropriate for your voice.

2) Think about how this came into your ken. If in fact you evolved this all by yourself (and do think about this, because, as I said, these little memes tend to come from writers in clumps, and they probably all think they came up with this themselves), then I say, go with it. It might not end up being something that you actually add to your repertoire, but your voice will always benefit from your own experimentation and innovation. But experimentation, of course, means fiddling with the use, the placement, the construction, and figuring out what works and when. A good voice comes from sensitivity, and that means being selective. Just because it's cool in this paragraph doesn't mean it'll be cool on every page. :)

3) If you realize you got this from an outside source (and that's great-- that's a way to learn... I got my love of parentheticals from CS Lewis, and I figure, hey, if it was cool in Narnia, it will be cool for me too) and you kind of like this phrasing or trend or whatever it is, do a bit of evaluation. First, I'd say, if this is such a clever thing, it probably should be showing up in published work too. Buy some of the latest books by newer authors in your sub-genre and see if it shows up at all there. Now of course, you don't just want to do what the published books do, you want to be fresh and unique and all that. But really, YOU should supply the freshness and uniqueness by how you use this thingy. It's a good idea to remind yourself of that, so you don't think merely using this is in and of itself fresh.

But anyway, if you don't see it anywhere in newly published work, it could be because it really is fresh. Or it could be because published authors don't think it's that cool. Or it could be that they do think it's that cool but the editor yanked it all out. It's sort of like when you're in high school and you get that issue of InStyle or Seventeen and there's this cute model in a kicky outfit, you know, just a long purple sweatshirt over long john pants, the white thermal waffle-weave type (that make anyone over 16 look like she has thunder-thighs), and you decide you simply have to wear that. And you go to school the next day and half the girls are dressed just like that, in which case you feel sort of un-unique and realize they too all got their issue of Seventeen in the mail yesterday, or you pull on those long john pants and waltz off to school and NO ONE is wearing it, and in fact, the most fashionable girl in your class studies you through her lorgnette (this high school is in Regency London ), and says in that languid way, "Did you forget to put on your ski bibs?" and you know that in fact this really isn't a trend everyone loves. And somewhere in your soul you think maybe they're right that this isn't all that awesome a look.

Well, if you never or almost never see this thingy in published work, it could be because no one has ever thought of it before. Or it could be because it's really not that awesome.

4) Hey, maybe it is that awesome! Maybe the languid girl puts down her lorgnette and asks if you want to sit at her table at lunch. But are you going to wear the long sweatshirt and the long johns every day from now on? Even in May? Even to the senior prom? Even when the trend has changed from sporty to girly? Even when your breasts grow bigger and the sweatshirt gets too tight (which impresses the boys, but not Her Lorgnette)?

As an editor or reader, I probably wouldn't notice or highlight or laugh at one use of this awesome device. And if it really works in a context, I might even admire it and invite you to sit at my lunch table. But we notice and decry all these thingys because they are overused, to the point that they become a joke. Yes. Okay, it's not a FUNNY joke, but editor jokes aren't usually funny. They're more rueful. Really, I wouldn't bother worrying about a couple lines where you've doubled the predicate. Maybe I'll figure you have a good reason I'm too tired to puzzle out. Maybe I figure I should just trust you. Maybe I'll think that you're a good stylist and you know your audience and they'll like this even if I'm not blown away. Maybe I'll be blown away. But if I see this same thingy fifty times in your 200 pages, well, I'll start wondering what the heck this is doing in this action scene when you just used it in the introspection for another POV character, and is it really effective in both instances, plus the other 48?

5) Certain prose stylings draw attention to themselves. (Sudden "bursts" of unattributed dialogue at the start of scenes, say. Stacked modifiers. ) That's good occasionally, but if you do it too often, you might be dragging the reader's attention away from the story. That's a big difference, I think, between literary fiction and popular fiction. Nowadays, literary fiction is often more about the presentation, and you can see the appreciation for sentences and metaphors in the reviews, which often quote these. But in popular fiction, I think if someone says, "That's a fabulous metaphor on page 22," it's sort of saying, "I was so caught by that metaphor I stopped reading the story." That's not to say you can't have great sentences and metaphors in popular fiction, or that pop fic writers can't be great stylists-- but I do think they have to be more stealthy about it. The pop fic writer can obsess about technique as long as he remembers always that the pop fic reader is more interested in the story. Anything that adds to the experience of the story will be good. But "kill your darlings" is good advice when you find yourself frequently using very clever prose thingys that draw the reader's eye and stop the reading.

And repetition doesn't make reading this a more pleasant experience. After the third or fourth doubled predicate, the reader will really start noticing. And she won't notice the way the protagonist is dealing with the conflict, she'll notice the doubled predicate and think, "Don't regard and study mean about the same thing? So why does she put both there?"

You don't want the reader stepping away from your story to wonder at your word choice.

6) Using these thingys could actually keep you from finding or creating your own voice. That's an important determination-- what do you sound like? What do you want to sound like? What's right for this book? What's right for this character?
To tell you the truth, sometimes I get a submission and I can highlight five or six of these trendy thingys, oh, right, this one is from the late lamented "duh" offsides trend; and she must have picked this rhetorical question meme last year when it was going around; oh, yeah, there's the list of brandnames-- she stole that one from DeLillo-- and yep, right on schedule, here's the one-word paragraph thing-- ayee, it burns, it burns.... That is, some submitters have "voices" that are mostly a collections of clever thingys they picked up the last few years. Those are not your voice. Your voice is your unique way of presenting your story. Don't ever forget that.

7) Don't forget that editors constantly have to consider factors you don't generally have to consider when you're drafting. For example, you might think that one-sentence paragraphs are kind of cool and make the prose seem really active (I don't think that, far from it, so please don't ever send me a scene full of these barbarisms). You might think it really enlivens the scene. You might not think at all, I don't know. But anyway, you send it off to Ernie Editor at Big Print Publisher Books. Ernie sees all that white space and thinks, "This is like 50,000 words, but 350 pages in manuscript. Be about the same in print. No way!"

Paper costs-- a lot, these days, and of course, multiply that by X number of copies printed, plus the additional binding cost. No editor is going to want to explain to his boss why this book is going to take almost twice as many sheets of paper as the usual 50K-word book.

"But I'm sending this to an electronic press," you protest. "They don't have to worry about paper!" No, but put yourself in the mind of a customer. The editor has to do that.
What would the reader think? Okay, let's say this isn't one of the MOST readers who would get really crabby at so many one-sentence paragraphs. Let's say this is just a reader who likes to read, and she spent $5 on this novel, and she's done reading it in two hours, and she thinks, gee, that wasn't much book for $5. There are a lot of other books which feel deeper and longer for the same cost. Why did this book feel so thin? Oh, right. Look at all that white space.

Some thingys are good. Some thingys are best in moderation. Some thingys bring up all sorts of considerations you need to consider if you want to publish with many publishers.

Another example-- Some writers like to put in a lot of cusswords, especially when they're in a man's POV. I see this a lot lately. A whole lot. I was thinking of investing in Dial soap because there are a lot of fictional fellas who need their mouths washed out. Maybe you think this is good-- that's the way this guy would think. Okay. But what if the line you're aiming at is a bit more sedate? What if the editor is religious or prim (or her boss is)? As you write, you might not have to consider that, but audience primness is something you might consider when you submit.

8) If you still kind of like those long johns (yes, really, this was a trend among my students a few years back, only, horrors, they'd wear long board shorts over the long johns, so we got to appreciate these layers: Sweatshirt. Knee length baggy saggy shorts. Long johns. Doc Marten boots), think about why. Evaluate. Let's say that you like the stutter step rhythm and the nuance that comes from doubling the predicate or modifier. Okay. Then please, use it. But use it where it works, and --because it's distinctive and distinctively annoying in repetition-- use it only when it really adds to the passage, when you want that stutter step rhythm. (And trust me, you do NOT want it always.)

Then don't assume because it works here, that any combination of two predicates will work here. It's not the doubling of predicates that works, it's this particular sentence that has the doubling using these particular predicates. So what the words are will matter. Be judicious here. For example, the most annoying for me is when you have two close synonyms, either one (but not both) of which could work:
He climbed, clambered up the wall.

Come on. That's like saying "roast beef in au jus sauce." He climbed, climbed. Are you really sure you want to present that to a cynical, jaded editor?

Another annoyance is when the second word kind of contradicts the first one:
Her face flushed red, pink.

Red and pink are two different colors. If her face is flushing red, what happens to make it pink? Does it first flush red and then dull to pink? If so, why not say so? If you mean she flushed sort of between red and pink, well, first, how important is the exact color? And if the exact color is important, why not name the exact color? Rose? Deep pink?

But... this is actually something I myself do occasionally. The "arcane and artificial" above actually started as "arcane, artificial," but I changed it to make a point. If you can put "and" between them -- NOT "or"-- and it makes sense because 1) they're not the same and 2) they're not contradictory, maybe the construction (sans the "and") can work... but you want to have a good reason not to use the "and" (like these are adjectives before the noun, or the rhythm is right for the passage).

Here's a passage by a master of this construction (Faulkner). Do NOT try this at home-- this is a short sentence for him. :)
Then hearing would reconcile and he would seem to listen to two separate Quentins now-the Quentin Compson preparing for Harvard in the South, the deep South dead since 1865 and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts, listening, having to listen, to one of the ghosts which had refused to lie still even longer than most had, telling him about old ghost-times.

See how each of those three doubled phrases do something different.
the South, the deep South
This is an elaboration, a qualification. I grew up in Virginia, which is "the south, but not the deep South," and I really understood that. It's conversational -- "I grew up in the South, not the deep South"-- but it also makes the point that the deep South is something special, something apart, within the greater South.
garrulous outraged baffled ghosts
This is my favorite phrase ever, I think. It gets its weight from an accumulation of modifiers there, but notice that each adjective is very different without being contradictory. I can just imagined these ghosts who just keep talking about how mad they are and puzzled by their deadness and the deadness of the deep South after the war. "That's not fair! I can't believe it! How did that happen?" And that capstone word ghosts. Wow. No repetition, but no contradiction either-- just an accumulation of traits so when you get to the end, you know exactly what he means.
listening, having to listen,
Here, the doubled predicates! And you might say, "Hey, that's really redundant-- listen/listen." But it's not listen/listen. It's listen/have to listen. There's a deepening of meaning there, as if the character is correcting himself, and the correction itself shows the process. He starts out just listening, but pretty soon, he can't stop listening. He has to listen. He doesn't have a choice but to listen.

So maybe:
He climbed, slipped and grabbed hold again.
Or:
He climbed, scrambled up the rock face.
Or (this is a good place for a participle!):
He climbed, scrambling up the rock face.
Or:
Her face flushed first red, then a dull pink as she realized what he meant.

I'd be especially careful with words that are close synonyms. Maybe they create nuance, or maybe they just confuse. "Do you mean climbed, or clambered? Choose one!"

That is, analyze what you mean here. Make the sentence mean what you want it to mean. Don't fall so in love with some thingy that you forget that what matters is the meaning.

Remember your voice or your character's voice isn't any one of these thingys. Voice is far more than the strewn cussword or the repetitive use of a particular construction. And if your voice is going to suffer a whole lot because you take out 90% of the doubled predicates, or have them only in action scenes, well, I think the problem is that you don't have a really strong voice there, and you need to work on that, and you don't get a strong voice by following trends. You have to know yourself and know your story and, yes, know what works and doesn't work in prose, and for that, you know, the best teachers are books you love, especially books you love that are in the sub-genre you're targetting, not me or Literary Executor Legatt.

"Mrs. Backover left in my trust five extremely literarily impressive thingys, and I would like to pass them on to a trusted member of the writing environment. You are that person. If you will deposit $42112 into this account, I will forward you these valuable thingys."

Alicia

Over-modification

When you're revising, watch for the "excessive" modifiers that
1) might make you sound gushy, and
2) weigh down the clarity of your prose.

That last is a bit counter-intuitive, because you modify in order to increase clarity by making everything more precise, right?

But you might be drawing attention to something that doesn't need more attention, or amplifying a perfectly good word, or making other unmodified words pale in contrast.

He shouted loudly into the wind.

She bit back an obscene swear word.

The vista was filled with toweringly high mountains.

The top of her knee was a little bit more than an inch below the bottom of her skirt.

The hole in the fusillade was immoderately large.


Beware of inadvertent humor. I mean, really, any hole in the fusillade is way too large, wouldn't you say?

Of course, sometimes it works to over-modify (especially for comic effect). But this is something to watch for. "An inch below the bottom of her skirt" is a good description. "A little bit more than an inch" makes me envision some nun with a ruler measuring the space. Precision is actually distracting sometimes.

And especially watch out for redundancy. Mountains are high, but some are higher than others, so maybe we will allow "high mountains" (I did grow up in a valley below some not very high mountains, I guess-- 3000-4000 feet, so I'd allow "high mountains" if you're talking about the Rockies, say). But "toweringly high?" Come on.

If you need to trim 1000 words or so from your manuscript, here's where to start. Delete the over-modifiers, and I bet you won't miss them. (I just deleted "even" there before "miss"-- "even miss them". See, it's easy once you set your mind to it.)

Alicia